FOR RIPLEY ASTILLA LUNA, SUICIDE IS THE END OF THE BEGINNING.

REMORSEFUL CALL GIRL DECIDES TO ATONE FOR HER CRIME BY KILLING HERSELF. SUICIDE. IT’S THE END OF THE BEGINNING.

The story of twenty-one-year-old Ripley Astilla Luna, a smart, beautiful young woman who suffered multiple childhood traumas that have set her on a collision course with her fate to die by means of her own hands. Ripley, whose name is an homage to the protagonist of the Alien movies, dreamed as a child of becoming an astronaut. Under the care of her psychiatrist, Dan Truscott, a man deep in his own moral quagmire, and receiving counsel from Mort, her only friend, she tries to navigate her way off the Earth and into space.

“Tonight, my body trembles to escape the bonds of gravity, to travel to our nearest celestial neighbor...I yearn to be of the stars. We are all stardust, after all, having been created from jetsam of the Big Bang. Eventually, we all will return to stardust. But I want to sail them now. I dream of orbiting Earth at 17,000 miles an hour in the Space Shuttle, circumnavigating Earth every ninety minutes, looking down on our planet where, unlike maps, there are no divisions between countries or people, just one harmonious whole. I want to frolic on the moon, leaping thirty feet at a bound, leaving footprints for eternity....To be weightless for a year, free from the bonds of Earth’s gravity! These are the stuff of my dreams. Dreams, sadly, rarely come true for me. They once seemed possible; all is possible when you are eleven and innocent....My dreams were snared by an invisible black hole that sucked them away, out of sight, so not even a glimmer of their light escapes its clutches. There was a time when this pissed me off, made me wail at the insensitivity of the Universe. Now, sadness alone reigns over me, inevitable entropy has worn away my ability to remain angry....When I was a child, I wanted to fly in space because it was cool, it would be fun, it would be something that few other humans could ever say they had done. But my reasons for wanting to travel extra-terrestrially have changed. As an adult, I was more like Ellen Ripley, both of us running far and fast away from a past that was worse than any current terror or unknown future. But, of course, there was no chance of flying to the moon for me. For Ripley Luna, the closest I would ever get to weightlessness would be drifting, falling here on Earth.”

“ … haunting…a tragic and darkly fascinating call girl story..” Kirkus Indie Reviews, July 12, 2017.
“In a voice at turns wry and tender, Ullman brings to life a woman who may be damaged by the dark roads life has taken her down, but it's her strength readers will remember, her singular sense of self. Not since Alien has a Ripley been more riveting.”— Deborah E. Kennedy, author of Tornado Weather, chosen by Oprah as a Top Ten Read, Summer 2017.

“...this book will take you the ledge. Will you jump? Will someone be there to catch you?”— Dean Visk, MSN, Director of Behavioral Health at a Cincinnati community mental health center.

“A riveting story of an astronaut wannabe whose life crashed and burned before she ever made it to the stars...”—Mark Piepmeier, Esq., Head of the Criminal Division, Hamilton County, Ohio Prosecutor's Office and Director of Law, City of Sharonville, Ohio.

“A.J. Ullman’s writing is as sexy and smart as his characters in this dark but enlightening cat-and-mouse tale about a troubled call girl and her beguiled therapist.”—Jim DeBrosse, author of Hidden City.

“Intriguing and suspenseful. Delve into the complex mind of a young woman. Drifting, Falling will leave you wanting more.”—Cari Morton, MSW, LISW-S, mental health therapist.

“...skillfully crafted...dramatic story about a young, beautiful woman with a hidden past...”—H. Louis Sirkin, Esq., Nationally known Constitutional Law and Criminal Defense attorney.

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About the Author

A. J. Ullman grew up and still lives in Southwest Ohio. Those experiences and settings color his works of fiction. A. J. has worked in a variety of endeavors, from restaurants, to libraries, to law offices, to community mental health centers to family practice medical offices. A. J. is a lawyer as well as a certified family nurse practitioner concentrating work these days in the medical field, treating patients in a primary care setting, including mental health disorders.

Experiences with psychiatric nursing have left indelible impressions on A. J. and these concepts are explored in both previous novels, One In A Million and Hit or Miss.